Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Idea for Combat Abilties

When I Level-Up and open the Combat Abilities tab I let out a sigh of discontent. Each category giving a small bland increase in its own respective school or specialty. I understand that those small increases add up and scale well as you progress further in the game, but it doesn't change the fact that it could be better -- more fun even!

I was sitting -- on the toilet actually, trying to think of a change that would reward players for specializing in Combat Abilities (and even Civic Abilites). What if each time you point a point into a skill it instead provided its own unique passive -- sort of like a Talent, but related to that school.

- 2-points into Warfare, you are immune to fear
- 4-points into Scoundrel, you start each combat invis for 1 turn
- 4-points into Hydrosophist, you emit a healing arua to allies each turn
- 5-points into Pyrokinetic, you may memorize one Pyrokinetic Source Skill without taking any slots

These are just some examples but I think you get the idea of where I'm coming from. This doesn't destroy the Talent system because Talents that exist accommodate general advantages.

I believe that these may not be fully implemented yet. I would imagine since the few T2 skills we can purchase have high memory slot requirements that the higher your skill the less memory slots these will take meaning you will need to invest in both the memory stat and your particular combat skill.

Additionally some of these passive bonuses are far more potent than others by leaps and bounds. (Looking at you necromancy) and people taking these combat skills not to become a pyromancer, geomancer, or necromancer but just to get the passive bonus is a bad idea.

If it were me to combat this I would put those combat skill specific bonuses as talents so you would have to not only invest skill points but also a talent to gain them and these talents could be potent because they would only be accessible by people who invest in that class much like some of the endgame talents in DOS1 requiring max skill in a combat role.

Those passive bonuses should have their values adjusted and maybe adding other passive effects but they shouldn't do anything you're describing.

As a concept, they're working as intended.

Why shouldn't they? Scaling is already adjusted by level/attributes/gear -- why not truly reward progression in a school with something more than 3% damage? Maybe I'll feel different when I see the higher tier skills. I just find myself reflecting on DOS and how I would only put points into a school to get a specific spell then stop. Or spend an excessive amount of points AND a talent point to get something unique.

I think your idea is wonderful.

The human mind has trouble relating to very small or very large numbers. A 3% increment of anything is very difficult to notice, making it difficult to feel rewarded as you level up.

Your idea tags an additional value to each combat ability, which is an alternate approach to tackling the above problem. I like it, as it adds some complexity to the system that is missing right now.

You should notice a difference in levels 6-8 after you've put your initial points into various schools to learn them or by going through different play throughs.

Are you saying you don't notice a 20% in damage over the default?

Now what may be happening is that because you're doing it point by point you end up adapting, visually, to those changes so it doesn't seem like anything but the second you have someone who is a non-pyrokinetic who isn't abusing high ground and isn't critting versus someone who is pyrokinetic who is on high ground and who has higher crit multiplier you'll definitely notice a damn difference.